isters; and that she would not have left the throne in the
same unsettled state at her death as she had persevered
express herself
in during her whole life. How did she
when bequeathing the crown to James the First, or did she
bequeath it at all?

In the popular pages of her female historian, Miss
Aikin has observed, that the closing scene of the long
and eventful life of Queen Elizabeth was marked by that
peculiarity of character and destiny which attended her
from the cradle, and pursued her to the grave.' The last
days of Elizabeth were, indeed, most melancholy-she
died a victim of the higher passions, and perhaps as much
of grief as of age, refusing all remedies and even nour-
ishment. But in all the published accounts, I can nowhere
discover how she conducted herself respecting the circum-
stance of our present inquiry. The most detailed narra-
tive, or as Gray the poet calls it, the Earl of Monmouth's
odd account of Queen Elizabeth's death,' is the one most
deserving notice; and there we find the circumstance of
this inquiry introduced. The queen, at that moment, was
reduced to so sad a state, that it is doubtful whether her
majesty was at all sensible of the inquiries put to her
The Earl of
by her ministers respecting the succession.
Monmouth says, on Wednesday, the 23d of March, she
grew speechless. That afternoon, by signs, she called
for her council, and by putting her hand to her head when
the king of Scots was named to succeed her, they all knew
he was the man she desired should reign after her.' Such
a sign as that of a dying woman putting her hand to her
bead was, to say the least, a very ambiguous acknowledg-
ment of the right of the Scottish monarch to the English
throne. The odd' but very natve account of Robert
Cary, afterwards Earl of Monmouth, is not furnished
with dates, nor with the exactness of a diary. Something
might have occurred on a preceding day which had not
reached hun. Camden describes the death-bed scene of
Elizabeth by this authentic writer it appears that she had
confided her state-secret of the succession to the lord ad-
miral (the Earl of Nottingham;) and when the earl found
the queen almost at her extremity, he communicated her
majesty's serret to the council, who commissioned the lord
admiral, the lord keeper, and the secretary to wait on her
majesty, and acquaint her that they came in the name of
the rest to learn her pleasure in reference to the succession.
The queen was then very weak, and answered them with
a faint voice, that she had already declared, that as she
held a regal sceptre, so she desired no other than a royal
successor. When the secretary requested her to explain
herself, the queen said, 'I would have a king succeed me;
and who should that be but my nearest kinsman, the king
of Scots ? Here this state-conversation was put an end
to by the interference of the archbishop advising her ma-
jesty to turn her thoughts to God. Never,' she replied,
has my mind wandered from him.'

An historian of Camden's high integrity would hardly have forged a fiction to please the new monarch; yet Camden has not been referred to on this occasion by the exact Birch, who draws his information from the letters of the French ambassador, Villeroy; information which it appears the English ministers had confined to this ambassa dor; nor do we get any distinct ideas from Elizabeth's more recent popular historian, who could only transcribe the account of Cary. He had told us a fact which he could not be mistaken in, that the queen fell speechless on Wednesday, 23d of March, on which day, however, she called her council, and made that sign with her hand, which, as the lords chose to understand, for ever united the two kingdoms. But the noble editor of Cary's Memoirs (the Earl of Cork and Orrery,) has observed, that the speeches made for Elizabeth on her death bed are all forged." Echard, Rapin, and a long string of historians, make her say faintly (so faintly indeed that it could not possibly be heard,) I will that a king succeed me, and who should that be but my nearest kinsman the king of Scots ? A different account of this matter will be found 'She was speechless, and alin the following memoirs. most expiring, when the chief counsellors of state were called into her hed-chamber. As soon as they were perfectly convinced that she could not utter an articulate word, and scarce could hear or understand one, they named the king of Scots to her, a liberty they dared not to have taken if she had been able to speak; she put her hand to her head, which was probably at that time in agonizing pain. The lords, who interpreted her signs just as they pleased, were immediately convinced that the motion of her hand to No. 12.

SOT.

her head was a declaration of James the Sixth as her succes-
What was this but the unanimous interpretations of
persons who were adoring the rising sun?'

This is lively and plausible; but the noble editor did
not recollect that the speeches made by Elizabeth on her
death-bed,' which he deems 'forgeries, in consequence of
the circumstance he had found in Cary's Memoirs, origin-
ate with Camden, and were only repeated by Rapin and
Echard, &c. I am now to confirm the narrative of the
elder historian, as well as the circumstance related by
Cary, describing the sign of the queen a little differently,
which happened on Wednesday 23d. A hitherto unno-
ticed document pretends to give a fuller and more circum-
stantial account of this affair, which commenced on the
preceding day, when the queen retained the power of
speech; and it will be confessed that the language here
used has all that loftiness and brevity which was the natu
I have discovered a curious doc-
ral style of this queen.
ument in a manuscript volume formerly in the possession
of Petyt, and seemingly in his own hand-writing. I do
not doubt its authenticity, and it could only have come
from some of the illustrious personages who were the act-
This
ors in that solemn scene, probably from Cecil.
memorandum is entitled,

'Account of the last words of Queen Elizabeth about her Successor.

'On the Tuesday before her death, being the twentythird of March, the admiral being on the right side of her bed, the lord keeper on the left, and Mr Secretary Cecil (afterwards Earl of Salisbury) at the bed's feet, all standing, the lord admiral put her in mind of her speech concerning the succession had at Whitehall, and that they, in the name of all the rest of her council, came unto her to know her pleasure who should succeed; whereunto she thus replied:

'I told you my seat had been the seat of kings, and I will And who should succeed me have no ruscal to succeed me. but a king?

'The lords not understanding this dark speech and looking one on the other; at length Mr Secretary boldly asked her what she meant by those words, that no rascal should succeed her. Whereto she replied, that her meaning was, that a king should succeed: and who, quoth she, should that be but our cousin of Scotland?

They asked her whether that were her absolute resolution? whereto she answered, I pray you trouble me no more: for I will have none but him. With which answer they departed.

Notwithstanding, after again, about four o'clock in the afternoon the next day, being Wednesday, after the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other divines, had been with ber, and left her in a manner speechless, the three lords aforesaid repaired unto her again, asking her if she remained in her former resolution, and who should succeed her? but not being able to speak, was asked by Mr Secretary in this sort, We beseech your majesty, if you remain in your former resolution, and that you would have the king of Scots to succeed you in your kingdom, show some sign unto us: whereat, suddenly heaving herself upwards in her bed, and putting her arms out of bed, she held her hands jointly over her head in manner of a crown; whence, as they guessed, she signified that she did not only wish him the kingdom, but desire continuance of his estate after which they departed, and the next morning she died. Immediately after her death, all the lords, as well of the council as other noblemen that were at the court, came from Richmond to Whitehall by six o'clock in the morning, where other noblemen that were in London met them. Touching the succession, after some speeches of divers competitors and matters of State, at length the admiral rehearsed all the aforesaid premises which the late queen had spoken to him, and to the lord keeper, and Mr Secretary (Cecil,) with the manner thereof; which they being asked, did affirm to be true upon their honour.'

Such is this singular document of secret history. I cannot but value it as authentic, because the one part is evidently alluded to by Camden, and the other is fully confirmed by Cary; and besides this, the remarkable expression of rascal' is found in the letter of the French ambassador. There were two interviews with the queen, and Cary appears only to have noticed the last on Wednesday, when the queen lay speechless. Elizabeth all her life had persevered in an obstinate mysteriousness respecting the succession, and it harassed her latest moments,

beholders; the king himself not being a little delighted with such fluent elegancies as made the night more glorious than the day.' This is a direct proof that James was by no means cold or negligent in his attentions to his queen; and the letter which has been given is the picture of his mind. That James the First was fondly indulgent to his queen, and could perform an act of chivalric gallantry with all the generosity of passion, and the ingenuity of an elegant mind, a pleasing anecdote which I have discovered in an unpublished letter of the day will show. I give it in the words of the writer.

August, 1613.

At their last, being at Theobald's, about a fortnight ago, the queen, shooting at a deer, mistook her mark, and killed Jewel, the king's most principal and special hound; at which he stormed exceedingly awhile; but after he knew who did it, he was soon pacified, and with much kindness wished her not to be troubled with it, for he should love her never the worse: and the next day sent her a diamond worth two thousand pounds, as a legacy from his dead dog. Love and kindness increase daily between them.'

Such is the history of a contemporary living at court, very opposite to that representation of coldness and neglect with which the king's temper has been so freely aspersed; and such too is the true portrait of James the First in domestic life. His first sensations were thoughtless and impetuous; and he would ungracefully thunder out an oath, which a puritan would set down in his tables,' while he omitted to note that this king's forgiveness and forgetfulness of personal injuries was sure to follow the feeling they had excited.

THE MAN OF ONE BOOK.

Mr Maurice, in his animated memoirs, has recently acquainted us with a fact which may be deemed important in the life of a literary man. He tells us, We have been just informed that Sir Wm. Jones invariably read through every year the works of Cicero, whose life indeed was the great exemplar of his own.' The same passion for the works of Cicero has been participated by others. When the best means of forming a good style were inquired of the learned Arnauld, he advised the daily study of Cicero; but it was observed that the object was not to form a Latin, but a French style: In that case,' replied Arnauld, you must still read Cicero.'

A predilection for some great author, among the vast number which must transiently occupy our attention, seems to be the happiest preservative for our taste: accustomed to that excellent author whom we have chosen for our favourite, we may in this intimacy possibly resemble him. It is to be feared, that if we do not form such a permanent attachment, we may be acquiring knowledge, while our enervated taste becomes less and less lively. Taste embalms the knowledge which otherwise cannot preserve itself. He who has long been intimate with one great author, will always be found to be a formidable antagonist; he has saturated his mind with the excellencies of genius; he has shaped his faculues insensibly to himself by his model, and he is like a man who even sleeps in armour, ready at a moment! The old Latin proverb reminds us of this fact, Cave ab homine unius libri: be cautious of the man of one book!

Pliny and Seneca give very safe advice on reading; that we should read much, but not many books-but they had no monthly lists of new publications! Since their days others have favoured us with Methods of Study,' and Catalogues of Books to be read.' Vain attempts to circurascribe that invisible circle of human knowledge which is perpetually enlarging itself! The multiplicity of books is an evil for the many; for we now find an helluo librorum, not only among the learned, but, with their pardon, among the unlearned; for those who, even to the prejudice of their health, persist only in reading the incessant book-novelties of our own time, will after many years acquire a sort of learned ignorance.

We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read, rather than not to read them; such an art is practicable. But amidst this vast multitude still let us be the man of one book, and preserve an uninterrupted intercourse with that great author with whose mode of thinking we sympathize, and whose charms of composition we can habitually retain.

It is remarkable that every great writer appears to have a predilection for some favourite author; and with Alexander, had they possessed a golden casket, would have Deenshrined the works they so constantly turned over. mosthenes felt such delight in the history of Thucydides, that to obtain a familiar and perfect mastery of his style, he re-copied his history eight times; while Brutus not only was constantly perusing Polybius even amidst the most busy periods of his life, but was abridging a copy of that author on the last awful night of his existence, when on the following day he was to try his fate against Antony and Octavius. Selim the Second had the Commentaries of Cæsar translated for his use; and it is recorded that his military ardour was heightened by the perusal. We are told that Scipio Africanus was made a hero by the writings of Xenophon. When Clarendon was employed in writ ing his history, he was in a constant study of Livy and Tacitus, to acquire the full and flowing style of the one, and the portrait-painting of the other: he records this circumstance in a letter. Voltaire had usually on his table the Athalie of Racine, and the Petit Careme of Masillon; the tragedies of the one were the finest model of French verse, the sermons of the other of French prose.' Were I obliged to sell my library,' exclaimed Diderot,' 'I would keep back Moses, Homer, and Richardson;' and by the eloge which this enthusiast writer composed on our English novelist, it is doubtful, had the Frenchman been obliged to have lost two of them, whether Richardson had not been the elected favourite. Monsieur Thomas, a French writer, who at times displays high eloquence and profound thinking, Herault de Sechelles tells us, studied chiefly one author, but that author was Cicero; and never went into the country unaccompanied by some of his works. Fenelon was constantly employed on his Homer; he left a transla tion of the greater part of the Odyssey, without any design of publication, but merely as an exercise for style. Montesquieu was a constant student of Tacitus, of whom he must be considered a forcible imitator. He has, in the manner of Tacitus, characterized Tacitus: That historian,' he says, 'who abridged every thing, because he saw every thing.' The famous Bourdaloue re-perused every year Saint Paul, Saint Chrysostom, and Cicero.

These,' says a French critic, were the sources of his masculine and solid eloquence.' Grotius had such a taste for Lucan, that he always carried a pocket edition about him, and has been seen to kiss his hand-book with the rapture of a true votary. If this anecdote be true, the elevated sentiments of the stern Roman were probably the attraction with the Batavian republican. The diversified reading of Leibnitz is well known; but he still attached himself to one or two favourites: Virgil was always in his hand when at leisure, and Leibnitz had read Virgil so often, that even in his old age he could repeat whole books by heart; Barclay's Argenis was his model for prose; when he was found dead in his chair, the Argenis had fallen from his hands. Rabelais and Marot were the perpetual favourites of La Fontaine; from one he borrowed his humour, and from the other his style. Quevedo was so passionately fond of the Don Quixote of Cervantes, that often in reading that unrivalled work he felt an impulse to burn his own inferior compositions: to be a sincere admirer and a hopeless rival is a case of authorship the hardest imaginable. Few writers can venture to anticipate the award of posterity; yet perhaps Quevedo had not even been what he was, without the perpetual excitement he received from his great master. race was the friend of his heart to Malherbe; he laid the Roman poet on his pillow, took him in the fields, and called his Horace his breviary. Plutarch, Montaigne, and Locke, were the three authors constantly in the hands of Rousseau, and he has drawn from them the groundwork of his ideas in his Emilie. The favourite author of the great Earl of Chatham was Barrow; on his style he had formed his eloquence, and had read his great master so constantly, as to be able to repeat his elaborate sermons from memory. The great Lord Burleigh always carried Tully's Offices in his pocket; Charles V. and Buonaparte had Machiavel frequently in their hands; and Davila was the perpetual study of Hampden: he seemed to have discovered in that historian of civil wars those which he anticipated in the land of his fathers.

Ho

These facts sufficiently illustrate the recorded circumstance of Sir William Jones's invariable habit of reading his Cicero through every year, and exemplify the happy

result for him, who, amidst the multiplicity of his authors, still continues in this way to be the man of one book,'

A BIBLIOGNOSTE.

A startling literary prophecy, recently sent forth from our oracular literature, threatens the annihilation of Public Libraries, which are one day to moulder away!

Listen to the vaticinator! "As conservatories of mental treasures, their value in times of darkness and barbarity was incalculable; and even in these happier days, when men are incited to explore new regions of thought, they command respect as depots of methodical and well-ordered references for the researches of the curious. But what in one state of society is invaluable, may at another be worthless; and the progress which the world has made within a very few centuries has considerably reduced the estimation which is due to such establishments. We will say more *-but enough! This idea of striking into dust 'the god of his idolatry,' the Dagon of his devotion, is sufficient to terrify the bibliographer, who views only a blind Samson pulling down the pillars of his temple!

All Europe was to receive from him new ideas concerning books and manuscripts. Yet all his mighty promises fumed away in projects; and though he appeared for ever correcting the blunders of others, this French Ritson left enough of his own to afford them a choice of revenge. His style of criticism was perfectly Ritsonian. He describes one of his rivals, as l'insolent et tres-insensé auteur de l'almanach de Gotha, on the simple subject of the origin of playing cards!

The Abbé Rive was one of those men of letters, of whom there are not a few, who pass all their lives in preparations. Mr Dibdin, since the above was written, has witnessed the confusion of the mind, and the gigantic industry, of our bibliognoste, which consisted of many trunks full of memoranda. The description will show the reader to what hard hunting these book-hunters voluntarily doom themselves, with little hope of obtaining fame! In one trunk were about six thousand notices of MSS of all ages. In another were wedged about twelve thousand descriptions of books in all languages, except those of French and Italian; sometimes with critical notes. In a third trunk was a bundle of papers relating to the History of the Troubadours. In a fourth was a collection of memoranda and literary sketches connected with the invention of arts and sciences, with pieces exclusively bibliographical. A fifth trunk contained between two and three thousand cards, written upon each side, respecting a collection of prints. In a sixth trunk were contamed his papers respecting earthquakes, volcanoes, and geographical subjects.' This Ajar flagellifer of the bibhographical tribe, who was, as Mr Dibdin observes, the terror of his acquaintance, and the pride of his patron,' is said to have been in private a very different man from his public character: all which may be true, without altering a shade of that public character. The French revolution showed how men, mild and even kind in domestic life, were sanguinary and ferocious in their public.

This future universal inundation of books, this superfluity of knowledge, in billions and trillions, overwhelms the imagination! It is now about four hundred years since the art of multiplying books has been discovered; and an arithmetician has attempted to calculate the incalculable of these four ages of typography, which he discovers have actually produced 3,641,960 works! Taking each work at three volumes, and reckoning only each impression to consist of three hundred copies, which is too little, the actual amount from the presses of Europe will give to 1816-32,776,400 volumes! each of which being an inch thick, if placed on a line, would cover 6069 leagues! Leibnitz facetiously maintained that such would be the increase of literature, that future generations would find whole cities insufficient to contain their libraries. We are, however, indebted to the patriotic endeavours of our grocers and trunkmakers, alchemists of literature! they annihilate the gross bodies without injuring the finer spirits.enlightening his rivals; he exulted that he was devoting to We are still more indebted to that neglected race, the bibliographers!

The science of books, for so bibliography is sometimes dignified, may deserve the gratitude of a public, who are yet insensible of the useful zeal of those book-practitioners, the nature of whose labours is yet so imperfectly comprehended. Who is this vaticinator of the uselessness of public libraries? Is he a bibliognoste, or a bibliographe, or a bibliomane, or a bibliophile, or a bibliotaphe? A bibliothecaire, or a bibliopole, the prophet cannot be; for the bibliothecaire is too delightfully busied among his shelves, and the bibliopole is too profitably concerned in furnishing perpetual additions, to admit of this hyperbolical terror of annihilation!† Unawares, we have dropped into that professional jargon which was chiefly forged by one who, though seated in the

scorner's chair,' was the Thaumaturgus of books

and manuscripts. The Abbé Rive had acquired a singular taste and curiosity, not without a fermenting dash of singular charlatanerie, in bibliography: the little volumes he occasionally put forth are things which but few hands have touched. He knew well, that for some books to be noised about they should not be read: this was one of those recondite mysteries of his, which we may have occasion further to reveal. This bibliographical hero was librarian to the most magnificent of book-collectors, the Duke de la

Valliere. The Abbé Rive was a strong but ungovernable brute, rabid, surly, but tres mordant. His master, whom I have discovered to have been the partner of the cur's tricks, would often pat him: and when the bibliognostes and the bibliomanes were in the heat of contest, let his 'bull-dog' loose among them, as the duke affectionately called his librarian. The 'bull-dog' of bibliography appears, too, to have had the taste and appetite of the tiger of politics, but he hardly lived to join the festival of the guillotine. I judge of this by an expression he used to one complaining of his parish priest, whom he advised to give une messe dans sa ventre" He had tried to exhaust his genius in La Chasse aur Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avisés, and acted Cain with his brothers. Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxiv-384.

Will this writer pardon me for ranking him, for a moment, among those 'generalisers' of the age who excel in what a critical friend has happily discriminated as ambitious writing; that is, writing on any topic, and not least strikingly, on that of which they know least; men otherwise of fine taste, and who excel in every charm of composition.

The rabid Abbé Rive gloried in terrifymg, without

'the rods of criticism and the laughter of Europe the bibliopoles,' or dealers in books, who would not get by heart his Cathechism' of a thousand and one questions and answers: it broke the slumbers of honest De Bure, who had found that life was already too short for his own Bibliographie Instructive.'

The Abbé Rive had contrived to catch the shades of the appellatives necessary to discriminate book-amateurs; and of the first term he is acknowledged to be the inventor.

A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book.

A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements.

A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained, and purse

heavy!

A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class, who appears to read them for his own pleasure. A bibliotaphe buries his books by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass-cases.

I shall catch our bibliognoste in the hour of book-rapture! It will produce a collection of bibliographical writers, and trivances have been raised by the art of more painful wri show to the second-sighted Edinburgher what human conters than himself-either to postpone the day of universal annihilation, or to preserve for our posterity three centuries hence, the knowledge which now so busily occupies us, and to transmit to them something more than what Bacon calls Inventories' of our literary treasures.

Histories, and literary biblotheques (or bibliothecas,) will always present to us,' says La Rive, an immense harvest of errors, till the authors of such catalogues shall be fully impressed by the importance of their art: and as it were, reading in the most distant ages of the future the literary good and evil which they may produce, foren & triumph from the pure devotion to truth, in spite of all the disgusts which their professional tasks involve; still patiently enduring the heavy chains which bind down those who give themselves up to this pursuit, with a passion which resembles heroism.

The catalogues of bibliotheques fires (or critical, his torical, and classified accounts of writers) have engendered that enormous swarm of bibliographical errors, which bave spread their roots, in greater or less quantities, in all